President Obama will ask for $755 million in mandatory funding to support the administration's new initiative to fight for a cure for cancer, the White House announced on Monday. The requested amount, which will be included in Mr. Obama's final budget blueprint, will bring the total cost to $1 billion. The forthcoming request comes on top of $195 million that has already been authorized for the current fiscal year. That first sliver will be dedicated to new cancer-related research activities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). And the bulk amount that will be requested will go toward NIH work next year as well as the Food and Drug Administration.
Maybe there wasn't a lot of sizzle in this latest Obamacare "surge." The third season of open enrollment in Obamacare health plans ended quietly Sunday in much of the United States. And in contrast to the first two seasons, federal officials were not crowing Monday about the numbers of people who signed up in the final week. The marked lack of celebration came as an insurance industry analyst said he believes "the big last-minute surge" in Obamacare plans "did not happen" as had been expected. That would be in sharp contrast to the first two years when very large crowds of people rushed to beat the final deadline for obtaining health coverage and avoid owing a fine.
The biggest obstacle a Richmond, Ind., hospital has had in signing up low-income Hoosiers for Indiana's expanded Medicaid program is convincing them it's real. "These are people who have never had this type of coverage before," said Chris Knight, the chief financial officer and vice president of Reid Health. "We have had very touching stories where people just break down and cry when they're given this coverage." As Indiana enters its second year of expanded Medicaid coverage created by the Affordable Care Act, hospitals around the state report it has helped patients gain needed coverage.
Dejah Collier is a waitress, theme-park ride operator, mother of two, uninsured—and a sign of the continuing challenge in widening coverage under the federal health law. Ms. Collier, a 24-year-old in the Denver area, had enrolled in the Medicaid federal-state insurance program to cover a hospital delivery for her second son but let her enrollment lapse later. Under the Affordable Care Act, her family's income is low enough that they would all likely still qualify for the program, but they haven't gone through the process to sign up again. "It just became less important," she said, adding that the family is healthy, and happy to pay cash for occasional services. [Subscription Required]
As the fight between the state's largest health insurer and a group of hospitals heats up, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey has sued two hospitals. The insurance giant claims public comments by Holy Name Medical Center and The Valley hospital in Ridgewood imply coverage by its new OMNIA policies is somehow deficient or dangerous. "Holy Name Medical Center and The Valley hospital have run a false and misleading ad campaign claiming, among other things, that our company 'couldn't care less' about babies," Horizon spokesman Tom Vincz said Saturday.
Central Ohio's nonprofit hospitals receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks each year. But the traditional justification for those exemptions is fading rapidly. For decades, caring for the poor without expectation of payment served as the primary basis for tax breaks provided to hospitals. But Ohio's Medicaid expansion has shaken that foundation, reducing the charity-care burden by nearly half in just two years, a "Dispatch" analysis found. The amount of charity care provided at central Ohio's four hospital systems dropped to $107 million in their most recent fiscal year from $194 million two years earlier. Net community benefit stayed virtually unchanged at $651 million.